Dr Damon Ashworth - Deliberately Better Sleep

180 Nutrition -The Health Sessions.

This week, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Damon Ashworth to the podcast. Dr Damon Ashworth is a Clinical Psychologist who completed a Doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology at Monash University, a Bachelor of Behavioural Sciences, and a Bachelor of Psychological Science with Honours at La Trobe University. Damon is considered an expert in the field of sleep and treatments for insomnia. His Doctoral research was a randomised clinical trial that significantly reduced insomnia and depression severity of participants across only four sessions of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). He takes a client-centred approach to treatment and aims to reduce distress and improve clients’ well-being while helping them achieve their goals.

He practices primarily from a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy framework. However, he also utilises Existential, Psychodynamic, Schema, Interpersonal, Dialectical, Humanistic, and Positive Psychology principles where clients will benefit from such approaches. He is passionate about the field of Psychology and always aims to apply the latest empirical findings to best help individuals meet their psychological and emotional needs.

Some questions asked during this episode:

• How do you define good quality sleep?
• What are the quick-wins where sleep is concerned?
• If I wake up with a racing mind what should I do?

https://180nutrition.com.au/

This week. I'm excited to welcome Dr. Damon Ashworth to the podcast. Dr. Ashworth is a clinical psychologist and considered an expert in the field of sleep and treatments for insomnia. He recently completed his first book on the subject called Deliberately Better Sleep. In this conversation, we discuss strategies on getting to sleep, staying asleep, and improving the overall quality of our sleep, something that we should all pay close attention to. Over to Dr. Ashworth.

(01:16) Hey, guys. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and I am delighted to welcome Dr. Damon Ashworth to the podcast. Dr. Ashworth, but I'm going to call you Damon for the purposes of this conversation, as we just discussed, thank you for joining us. How are you? And first up, before we get into the nitty-gritty of the conversation, I would love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please.

Damon

(01:41)

Sure. Yeah. I'm Damon. I'm a clinical psychologist. So I did my research at Monash University in Australia. It was a clinical trial where we saw people with insomnia and depression, and they'd been given antidepressants, and they weren't improving as much as they'd like to. So we gave them four sessions of CBTI or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, and we found that it improved their sleep, but it also improved their mood and depression, their anxiety, their stress, and also their fatigue. So it had a huge impact.

For full transcript and interview:

https://180nutrition.com.au/180-tv/dr-damon-ashworth-interview/